I have been building my assets in Modo indie, and its been really good so far. Definitely software I would recommend.
However, I have one question about it at present…
If I want to bring in the smoothing groups for an asset I create in Modo and wish to import to UE4, I am led to believe that I need to select each face in polygon mode, and split the normals for each one, separately.
This is fine for basic assets with like, 14/15 faces.
Problem is, some things, as we all know have way more faces than this. I severely doubt that the way to split the normals it done face by face. Is there a faster way to do this in modo indie?
I’ve wrote somewhere mini-tutorial, but lost it ;_;
Basically “smoothing groups” are pure vertex normals of the mesh. In MODO you have tons of tool to change it - much more than in other software. You can use it through material, manually, vertex map and so on.
Great introductionary video on this theme:
After you set your vertex normals and model looks good in viewport you need to bake vertex normals map into model you want to export(Sounds scary, yeah). Press red button and you’re all set!
Green button to show vertex normals in viewport - I think it may help you to understand what exactly is happening
Blue window - also helps in understanding how modo works with subdividing, uv maps, normal maps, vertex map and etc
I will def get watching this tonight, I am building a modular levels pack that will be used in my game (and also released to the UE4 community for free).
Because I will be allowing other people to use it, I don’t want any little embarrassing blemishes on the meshes!
